Word: beams
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Raise High the Roof Beam, Salinger...
Time to Dive. And not all flares, says Van Allen, shoot particles to the earth. They must be near the western edge of the sun or just beyond it. The particles do not move in straight lines like the beam of a searchlight. Affected by the sun's magnetism they move in complicated curves and may hit a spacecraft from many directions. For this reason, says Van Allen, a spacecraft cannot be sheltered by simply putting an umbrellalike shield between...
...Raise High the Roof Beam, Salinger...
Actually, agents both East and West have benefited enormously from far more modern devices. It is now possible to eavesdrop on a conversation held in the middle of an empty prairie by simply pointing a beam of light from 500 yards away. New cameras can take pictures in total darkness without the use of infra-red light. Finely ground lenses can zoom in from blocks away to pick up the fine print on an insurance policy. But the Soviets like the more old-fashioned and romantic gadgets, mostly, it seems, from a native passion for melodrama...
...have wondered for years why fish and other creatures that live at middling ocean depths carry rows of little searchlights on their bellies. The searchlights (photophores) are cup-shaped organs that are lined with highly reflective tissue and contain luminous cells whose light is concentrated into a downward-pointing beam. Biologists reason that since photophores evolved independently in fish (vertebrates), shrimps (crustaceans), and squids (mollusks), they must have important survival value. But what was it? The bright beams of the photophores shining downward would seem to be a disadvantage, serving only to draw the attention of predators...